Sharp brings TV to the powerless

Forget schools, forget lighting, forget easy access to drinking water... it's that sweet TV goodness that people living off the grid really need. Well, that and laptops. You're looking at Sharp's 26-inch LCD prototype which uses just a quarter of the power (or a third measured annually) of a conventional CRT with the same screen size. That's low enough to be suitably powered by a Sharp, triple-junction thin-film solar cell module whose surface area is roughly equivalent to that of the LCD screen. Sharp hopes to market the two items as a pair in a bid to "contribute to the environment." Good thing too, 'cause nothing fills a billion empty bellies like an eye-full of boob-candy.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Giz Service Announcement: Fireworks and Watermelon Don't Mix [July 4th]

newVideoPlayer("/july4th_part1_giz.flv", 475, 376,""); Hey, we here at Gizmodo, together with Nancy Nord of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, want to remind you to have a safe 4th of July....

Nike Night of Sevens Pack

Chinese culture and tradition often play a part in Nike’s designing and thought process. Nike uses the traditional Chinese festival, “The Night of Sevens”, as their theme for this pack. The sneakers are made up of patent leather on the toes, translucent soles, and Chinese characters. The Air Max 1 and Court Force High and

Chinese culture and tradition often play a part in Nike’s designing and thought process. Nike uses the traditional Chinese festival, “The Night of Sevens”, as their theme for this pack. The sneakers are made up of patent leather on the toes, translucent soles, and Chinese characters. The Air Max 1 and Court Force High and Low are the three Asia exclusive models chosen for this pack. Unfortunately, no release date has been officially set, but Kix-Files is now taking pre-orders.

Research UAV is Preview of Hovering Spy Drones of Tomorrow [Drone]

Meet STARMAC, the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control. Possibly the cleverest remote control mini-helicopter you've ever seen, packed with GPS, sensors and computer...

Man Arrested for using Digg Robot

OpenMoko says "screw it," starts taking FreeRunner orders a day early

July 4 was the date, but hey, what's the harm in opening up the floodgates just a handful of hours early? Get past the lack of 3G, EDGE, camera, and a rock-solid set of tested, commercialized apps, and open-source phoning nirvana can now be yours for $399 on the plastic.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Will This Year’s Hot-Dog-Eating Contest Just Not Be the Same?

The Brooklyn Paper touched on Takeru Kobayashi’s health problems, but an ABC News profile of the Tsunami goes more in depth about the turmoil he’s faced since his mother passed away in March of 2007. It’s going to be harder than ever to root against the poor guy, especially since his “jawthritis” prevents him from using his much feared “Solomon method” of demolishing hot dogs two at a time. Perhaps he’ll take a page from the book of Crazy Legs Conti and Tim “Eater X” Janus, who are profiled in a Voice piece— maybe he’ll resort to the “reverse bunning” method that Crazy Legs also discussed in his New York Diet. Either way, with the contest down from twelve minutes to ten this year (not to mention a forecast of rain), it’s just not going to be the same — especially with the Wall Street Journal putting still more of a damper on things by pointing to a study that indicates that competitive eaters risk the possibility of permanently stretching their stomachs to the point of needing surgery. And then there’s the real tragedy: that Daniel “Mosca” Maurer will not be at the table this year. Sigh.

10 Things We Still Want in PlayStation 3 Firmware (i.e. NOT In-Game XMB) [More To Life Than In-Game XMB]

Sony's latest PlayStation 3 firmware update 2.4 brought what the fanboys have been crying about since the console's inception—in-game access to the console's Cross Media Bar (XMB). But I'll tell you...

Rusty Knot Gets Taken Down Like A Ship’s Mast

Cops adopt SMS tip lines to help fight crime, find out where the party is

Apparently, law enforcement is seriously stepping into the 21st century. According to a report, police dep artments in Boston, Cincinnati and over 100 other communities have begun using a text message tip-line in the hopes that cellphone-savvy youngsters will alert them if they see a crime being committed, or know of one ahead of time. "It's obvious that the future of communication is texting," said Boston Police Crime Stoppers commander (and techno-visionary) Michael Charbonnier, adding that the department's system as yielded, "Some great drug information, specific times, dates, names of suspects, locations, pickup times, license plate numbers." The only roadblock? Getting cops to understand that OMG doesn't refer to a terrorist attack.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments